Posted on 01/29/2021 4:57:54 PM PST by nickcarraway
Sensing seizures is all in a day's work for 14-month-old labrador Echo.
After a sweat and saliva test to check compatibility, Newcastle woman Cassie was matched with Echo when the pup was just eight weeks old.
The pup has enabled Cassie to live home alone
"I live alone and really the only reason I can do that is because I have an assistant dog," Cassie said.
"If I'm home, I have a vital call alarm system.
"So she's been taught to learn my body language.
Cassie was matched with Echo when the pup was just eight weeks old.(ABC Newcastle: Anthony Scully) "I have convulsive seizures, and so she's learned that that means she needs to go press the button. That is the cue."
When outside, Cassie relies on Echo even more.
She said Echo had started to give her five-minute warnings, and that had proved invaluable twice during an exercise class.
"And if I'm on equipment, it can be pretty dangerous if I'm standing up on something and have a seizure there. So she's alerted me twice," she said.
And if there is a choking risk from vomit, dogs like Echo are also trained to spring into action.
"One of the things that some people do when they have seizures, is they may throw up....So the dogs can actually be taught to lick your airways clear," she said.
"They can do such amazing things, and my previous dog, he actually learnt to roll me into the recovery position.
"She (Echo) wont learn to do that for a while, as there are quite detailed the steps they have to learn when they're responding."
Pups and their trainers
Echo was put through her paces in the Hunter Valley, under the guidance of expert trainer Carmel Kaczmar.
"So what we do, I use a little training session that's a little bit like diabetic alert... and I use that into the seizure alert," Ms Kaczmar said.
"So the dogs sensing the smell of picking up the smells of different changes."
Her newest recruit is a fluff ball named Coco, destined to be a facility dog at a purpose-built centre for people with conditions requiring complex rehabilitation.
Carmel Kaczmar from Miracle Assistance Dogs holding newest recruit therapy dog Coco(ABC Newcastle: Anthony Scully) ] Daniel Buck is the clinical director of the centre.
"I think having a dog like Coco formally trained and skilled, I think it's just so important from a safety perspective," he said.
"We don't want an untrained dog scratching skin or anything like that.
"We want Coco to have great manners, and interact really appropriately with our clients."
Rheana Nation from the Epilepsy Foundation has seen first-hand how seizure alert dogs work, in her case with her son and his dog, Chloe.
"They were paired for seven or eight years, and it changed his life immensely," she said.
"She's actually saved his life on a number of occasions."
Researchers believe seizure alert and response dogs might be able to detect changes in scent through sweat or other signs, such as slight involuntary twitches.
But studies have shown seizure dogs aren't right for everyone, and global data suggests they only work for about 40 per cent of people.
The Epilepsy Foundation's Rheana Nation said more research was needed.
"We really need some further evidence based information and research done on larger cohorts," she said.
"That's something that we would be excited about, you know, moving forward."
It was a view shared by Carmel Kaczmar.
"The science yet hasn't picked up enough to tell us exactly how that happens... So a lot more money needs to go into research first to figure that out."
Ms Kaczmar said more suitable dogs and trainers were also needed, because there were long wait lists and few animals, like Coco, available.
"We've only got 21 guide, hearing and assistance dog approved organizations, including the guide dogs, throughout all of Australia," she said.
"That means that there's definitely not enough assistance dogs going around."
Ms Kaczmar said she received about 100 applications annually, but in that time only matched three or four people with the dogs she trained.
Training each dog costs about $40,000.
I’m getting old so I need a dog to sense Hot Girls!
FWIW, that’s how I’m going to go about choosing my next husband.
Dogs are amazing. Some might even be guardian angels in disguise. A few years ago we were dog-sitting for a very sweet old Golden Retriever. She just loved everybody. Very good dog. While she was out in the living room with our youngest she started whining and carrying on. We went out there and found him having a grand mal seizure with his head jammed into the couch arm at a bad angle. He might have suffocated if she hadn’t alerted us.
Many really good doctors use their personal sense of smell to make certain diagnosis’s of their patient.
Dogs with a great sense of smell could be taught to sense cancer, seizures and other ailments as well as drug abuse.
We are not talking about Joe Biden sniffing here.
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